Today on Education Counts Michiana, Dial-a-Story for kids and adults, art and nature at the Snite Museum, positive mental health, Project Lead the Way.

Education Counts.

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Welcome to Education Counts Michiana I'm your host Sam Centellas.

Education Counts highlights programs and initiatives that are impacting how we teach, how we learn and how we embrace education.

This program explores ideas in all education sectors preschool through lifelong learning, K12, post-high school and job advancement training with the philosophy that we should never stop seeking knowledge.

Find additional resources at WNIT.org and on the Education Counts Facebook page.

First up, let your fingers do the walking.

Nothing beats hearing a story read out loud.

The La Porte County Public Library's Dial-a-Story program provides age appropriate stories for children, teens and even adults.

We take a look and a listen and how these stories are brought to life.

Segment producer Brent Fox has this story.

Proud and silent, letting his scales shimmer one day, a little blue fish followed.

What I love about Dial-A-Story is the accessibility of it all.

Dial-A-Story allows anybody, even if you don't live in La Porte, the opportunity to access this resource and listen to a great story.

And we offer many different types and genres of stories.

We offer fun jokes, fun riddles.

We offer the opportunity for community members to suggest titles or suggest jokes.

We offer classics.

So you might hear some stories that were published many hundreds of years ago that you forgot about or you've never heard before.

So it's just a fun way to increase exposure to books and increased exposure to reading and learning skills for kiddos and adults.

Our Dial-A-Story program is such where you get to call in and choose from a menu of options and you get to choose a children's story or an adult story, a riddle or a poem, and you get to hear a human voice.

And it was really something that we that came out of the pandemic that we brought back.

And it was just a joy to be able to offer something to the community.

In fact, being a dog owner was more difficult than Lucy had thought, I can't stand the mess, I can't stand the digging and I can't stand the endless bowls of porridge... Leonard and Maryanne found they liked each other under the sun, in the long grass they lay together.

It really does benefit early literacy development in children, whether they are not quite yet ready for school or they're in school because there are many different benefits that the Dial-A-Story program offers.

For example, for kids who need early exposure to books and to hearing different language, it really encourages vocabulary development because they get to hear different, different words being read to them.

They get to hear different voices reading different stories to them.

They get exposure to stories as well.

And also if they are familiar with different librarians here in our organization, we frequently have staff, volunteers read.

So it's kind of fun to have your your favorite librarian or your favorite staff member at the library read a book and you can call in and and listen to that particular library and read a book.

So they kind of get that connection with their community librarian as well.

If you would like to volunteer to be a literary reader, he would go to our website and there's a get involved button.

And from there you'd fill out just a very short information about yourself and what you would like to volunteer with.

And then one of our volunteer coordinators will contact you for more information from you and then get you started on the process.

The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Fister.

A long way out in the deep blue sea, though that's a pity I only have a shower otherwise I might be very tempted.

Soon she met another animal, some say that a lion should have chomped a duck.

My favorite story that I have read for Dial-A-Story was called How to Be a Lion by Ed Vere.

And this story has a great message about how you can be yourself and how being unique actually makes the world a better place.

And that was a message I think all of us need to hear.

And it's OK to be different, but not chomping a duck.

You've gone too far.

The fierce lions growled and roared.

There's only one way to be a lion.

Léonard,.

Excuse me.

I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm a nice dog who's looking for a nice basket in a home with lots of food, a garden to play in, and someone to love me and care for me and take me for walks every day.

For me, reading it was a lot of fun because I was doing the story times here.

It was a natural kind of transition for me because I love reading books to kids and I. I can imagine the audience on the other side of the phone.

They read it.

You're listening to the stories and just kind of getting that exciting exposure to the story because the story and reading is such a critical part of a child's development, not just academically, but when they're introduced to stories, they get the social and emotional and just development included with that.

And it's just so important for them to have exposure to stories that I knew this particular initiative was so important because not every parent can come to story time when we offer it.

So allowing this initiative 24/7, 365 days a year, all you have to do is call on the phone.

It increases the accessibility.

It allows parents the opportunity to give their child exposure to stories, and it allows parents the time to let their child hear a story when maybe they're changing a diaper or when maybe they're on a long car ride.

It's like the it's like another version of an audio book.

I just think that Dial-A-Story is for everybody.

I hope that everyone has an opportunity to call in and listen.

And I think it really does bring back a lot of memories from my own childhood.

But it's just a really great, refreshing way to hear a story and not have to.

The only effort you have to put forth is just dialing a phone number.

This story is called In Like a Lion Out Like a Lamb by Marion Dane.

Learn more about Dial-a-Story at WNIT.org.

Art and Nature, the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame presents Side by Side Saturdays.

The program hopes to continue educating children about the beauty in nature.

Their classes are held via Zoom, but promise to provide educational enrichment about art and the environment around us.

Segment producer Trevor Fowler presents this story Side by Side Saturday is a program we designed for a child aged four to eight and an important adult in their life.

We've had family programs, things like family days and family nights for almost a decade now.

And these are somewhat large events with lots of people and lots of things to do.

So we wanted to create an experience that was a little bit more intimate and would really allow families to connect with works of art and each other.

Each Side by Side Saturday focuses on three to four works of art that relate to a specific theme.

Things like people in art, animals in art, nature and art.

So kind of big ideas.

We spend time looking closely at artworks together, talking about what we're seeing and thinking.

And then we work on an art project inspired by each of those artworks.

We actually held our first one in February of last year and had several scheduled throughout 2020.

Then the museum closed in March along with the rest of the university and pretty much the entire world.

And so like so many things during the pandemic, we went online.

And so this year we've had two Side by Side Saturday programs online and each program is actually filled to capacity.

So we were very happy that we had kind of, you know, transitioned this program into a different format and that people were really interested in that new kind of version of the program.

During the program, we spent a lot of time looking closely, wondering and sharing our ideas as a group.

The young people are actually really in charge of this program.

Their ideas and thoughts guide and really inspire the grown ups, including me.

We always build in time for the whole group to kind of interact with each other and the artwork.

So they meet new people in that way and gain new perspectives.

We ask a lot of questions and really try to get to what the young people are thinking, what they're wondering about, what their ideas are.

Young people have a different perspective on the world and so rarely do they get to share that.

And so being in the museum with young people and hearing what they're thinking and what they're wondering about is really inspiring.

So on a very personal level, it's constantly enriching.

It's--it's funny, it's serious.

But I think, you know, for us to be a space, for our community to come together, to learn to be social, to escape reality, if that's what they need, you know.

Museum can be a lot of different things for a lot of different people at different times in their life.

Adults are really able to connect with the young people in their lives in different ways than they normally would.

You know, the adults are experiencing the same things as the young people at the same time.

And so for the duration of the program, the adults don't have to worry about being in charge.

They can kind of let themselves just experience what's happening and dive right in alongside their young art partner.

What's really wonderful is the adults often learn new things from the perspectives and ideas of the young people.

Obviously, an online experience isn't the same as an in-person experience in an art museum.

And during normal times, Side by Side Saturday would have offered adults an opportunity to connect with a young person in their life through art.

And so it was a way for folks to dive a bit deeper into our collections and also a way for them to create fun memories together in the museum physically.

During the pandemic, Side by Side Saturdays offered families an opportunity to connect over long distances in ways they couldn't offline.

And so we were bringing families together over art.

It became a source of connection and actually a kind of way to escape the challenging realities of living in a pandemic, when pretty much all the things you did as a family normally weren't possible any longer, like so many other people were looking forward to the day when we can bring this back to an in-person experience in the museum so we can kind of get up close and personal with works of art.

I always say that I like to breathe the same air as the artworks.

That's just a different experience than an online experience.

In the immediate future, this summer, we're continuing to hold the program online and we'll have two additional sessions over the summer.

Find out more about the program at WNIT.org.

Teenager Mental Health.

As the days grow longer and hotter, it can be easy to forget that the importance of mental health does not go away.

After a roller coaster of a school year, teens could be feeling even more pressure than usual.

We take a look at the services young people in Warsaw can use to keep them in the right state of mind.

The summer months bring longer days and hotter weather, but the issue of mental health never takes a break.

It's always such an important issue because we know it impacts a great proportion of our kids, sometimes throughout their childhood.

Sometimes it emerges through adolescence and last into adulthood, and sometimes it's a little bit sporadic.

But again, it's really important that we talk about it because it does affect a good number of our kids.

And and we need to make sure that we're addressing it appropriately.

Mental health.

That is one of those things with the longer you get, you wait to get help, the longer going to take for you to get--to get better, to get back to normal, in a sense.

Just like what I was saying to you before.

When we get sick, we treat the sicknesses by going to our doctor and the doctor prescribes the medication and the doctor prescribes some type of therapy sometimes, you know, to get back to normal.

The longer we wait, it's going to take a lot of work to get over that.

Any time there's stress, fear, grief, isolation that can escalate mental health issues.

And often in the pandemic, many families, many students have experienced all of those things in combination.

And so we know that--that is accelerating and sometimes sparking new mental health concerns with our kids.

So it's been kind of the perfect storm that has created some really serious issues that we need to be paying attention to and that we need to make sure that we can identify and then again, refer those students to the help they need.

It's especially important for parents to recognize the early warning signs.

We don't want to blame the child, right?

You don't want to say anything that makes it feel like the kid's doing something wrong.

However they're responding, we want to acknowledge and validate and then help move them to a place that may be more engaging or if they need that clinical care we want to make sure that we refer them to them.

So knowing the signs, knowing what that means, what's just normal, particularly in adolescence, where there's the onset of many mental health issues, being a little maybe abrasive or touchy is also developmentally normal.

But if it goes on for too long, if it's not just a phase or if it's not just a period of frustration, parents need to be paying attention.

So it's important to know those signs.

Everyone knows their kid best.

And so make sure you're you're looking for any of those substantive changes.

The question becomes, who can young people turn to if they have questions about mental health issues.

We hope that there's a caring adult with them.

Right, whether that's a family member or a teacher.

And most often that's how young people accessed help for their mental illness.

And so often that is a teacher, a pediatrician.

Sometimes it's at their faith community.

Right.

Someone will notice and be able to refer them.

Sometimes, you know, you want to, again, make sure that we're destigmatizing any mental health issues and normalizing it for the students.

And then also we want to make sure that we're connecting them with a professional who can address these issues.

It's not something that, as amateurs should should really try to attempt.

For people in Warsaw, Indiana, the Bowen Center offers many different types of services.

We have therapy services.

We--we have skill coach services.

That is services with--where the person go to the house or work with the kids.

They teach them some skills about how to handle the depression and how to handle the, you know, the--you know, the anxiety, the panic attacks.

So and so.

So also, they work at the school, were sent to it, you know, and sometimes to be able to gain the trust.

While mental health doesn't take the summer off, teens addressing this issue during this time better prepares them for when they get back to school.

If we start early, so before the schools--go back to school so when they go back to school, they know how to do--they have the ability to know how to behave or how to control that anxiety or how to control that depression, what to do.

Yeah, they learn the skills to learn how to--to act and how to control those--those symptoms, that are bothering them.

Learn more at WNIT.org.

Career Pathways.

Project Lead the Way is a program in Berrien Springs that helps guide students along possible career pathways.

This hands-on program introduces students to biology, engineering and many other career options so that they can have an idea of what they could pursue after high school.

The mission of Project Lead The Way is to get students familiar with three different pathways computer science, engineering and biomedical sciences.

Engineering is more of like a hands-on class.

And you build stuff and you can do all kinds of different things.

In Biomed, you learn a lot about, like, the body and all that kind of stuff.

Biomed, compared to other school, it requires a lot more communication and talking with your peers.

It's a very hands on experience you have to--well, in my class we're using anatomy class, so you have to research all different muscles, the skeletal muscles and all that, and you have to put all the muscles onto your mannequin and explain to your teacher how it's important to the body.

For this, this is year one of biomedical.

You basically--it's a DNA class.

You learn about how it's cut into different DNA and how it's important to your body.

We have the opportunity with this program to have an area for a certain group of kids that sometimes will be left out.

There's a lot of times that the sciences people think are these upper level--you have to be really intelligent person.

You know, you've got to have great grades.

And sometimes when you're younger, just being exposed to that, you start to realize that, hey, I may be good at this and then you develop those skills.

So having that opportunity to expose students who normally wouldn't be exposed or might shy away from that because they're concerned that they're not smart enough or they don't have the grades, it gets them involved in a way that they start to discover they do have the skills to do that and they go down a path that maybe they wouldn't have.

So I think it's just a great option for a group of students that might not otherwise take that option.

Our students here at Berrien Spring start right at kindergarten with the hands-on STEM programming through what's called PLTW Launch.

So K through five, that is their core science curriculum.

Then when they get into middle school, they are part of the PLTW Gateway program.

So they kind of start the feeder courses for the engineering, the computer science and the biomedical courses that go much more and more into depth when they get into the high school courses.

So all of the curriculum is already provided for us and our teachers.

The training is provided and our teachers, the high school teachers spend two weeks in the summer learning every single activity and every single project that their students will do.

And our middle school teachers spend a week in training.

So Project Lead the Way is really prepared, not just our students, but also our teachers to be successful facilitators.

A lot of the curriculum that was in the classroom setting was teacher led and PLTW really does a nice job at the student center.

And they work in collaboration in groups and they move through a curriculum, the teacher being more of a facilitator as opposed to the quote unquote instructor.

But across the nation, you're starting to see a transition where the classroom is becoming more student centered and less teacher centered and students are kind of driving away while the teacher is kind of driving--driving the crazy train persay.

But research does show that that is the most effective way to educate our students.

PLTW is based on student led.

And so it's very student led based.

And the teacher is kind of just sitting in the background watching.

It's a much more hands-on curriculum.

Students are not learning through necessarily reading or listening to a lecture.

They're learning by doing.

They're active, then they're learning.

There're a lot of projects.

They're learning about the human body through dissections.

There's a lot of lab work involved, much more than probably like a traditional biology class It's their choice.

So they can determine kind of what area, what avenue they want to study from different aspects of a So that collaboration is key.

And naturally, students want them to do so while making progress educationally.

those students that typically struggle in the traditional classroom so often thrive here because of their hands on experience, and we're teaching them that it is OK to fail.

things we have about PLTW is things we have about PLTW is it offers options for our it offers options for our students.

And option for students is option for students is some real world connections.

It gives students maybe some idea or direction of what they do want to do after school.

year biomedical students 'I'm going to be a doctor'.

You come into high school, either learning or experiencing some different that maybe they still want to more focused direction, not just doctor.

Well, I've had students want to go into Or I've also had the a class or two and been like, this is really not for me.

I'd much rather have a school.

Then having gone through a something that I think I'm going to enjoy.

me what that could be about.

And I learn--I'm the heart in the body and So if you want to get into, this course is very good to show you if you are okay with that.

I'm leaning towards a medical field.

So I thought this class would be a good introduction to that to see successful in my career or if I would enjoy it.

college where I was stressed out and not knowing what to it's helpful for me because I'd rather ask the questions now in high school than in college when I was already paid to get a degree.

And I may have changed my mind in college, but now knowing what I want to do right now is nice for me.

right now is nice for me.

I think it's really vital and important that we give those investigate those choices here at the high school and that can help them and field they want to then go on and spend most of college to Thank you for joining us on Education Counts Michiana.

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This WNIT local production has been is underwritten by Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and economic development for centuries, supporting the past, current and future development of the Michiana County Community Foundation, the Dekko Foundation, Community County, LeGrange County Community Foundation, NIPSCO, the Beim Foundation, United Marshall County Community Early Childhood Coalition Early Childhood Coalition and a Gift by Elmer and a Gift by Elmer and Dolores Tepe.